Tag: Gary Keller
I Couldn’t Live My Dreams Until I Discovered These 7 Rules
When I first set out on a quest to live my dreams, 22 years ago, I thought success in this endeavour was about inspiration.
I’d read about Sylvester Stallone writing the first draft of his Rocky script in three days and assumed that, if I was equally inspired, I’d produce a similar result.
Unfortunately, nothing could have been further from the truth.
From Failure To Success
My dream was to become a bestselling self-help author. However, it took me 5 years to start writing my book.
Once I began, it took me a further four and a half years to complete and publish my manuscript.
After it was released, I assumed my book would be a bestseller and I’d live off the royalties for the rest of my life.
Frustrated, I witnessed a trickle of sales, very few reviews and zero impact from my book.
I couldn’t understand it. I knew I’d written a good book; I visualised it selling a million copies a million times and I used the law of attraction to attract sales.
Still, very little changed.
It was at this point, about 2 years after I’d launched the book, I realised that the way I approached living my dreams had to change.
I had to forget working off inspiration and impose a strict schedule to ensure I got the most out of myself.
Fast forward 10 years and I’ve received a book deal for my second book, released two additional books and become an Amazon bestseller many times over.
Below are the 7 rules I discovered which enabled this to happen. My hope is that you can take them, adapt them to your situation, and achieve a similar level of success. They work!
1. Work A Minimum Of 20 Hours A Week On Your Dream
Ten years ago, when I had my major rethink, I didn’t have an unlimited amount of time to dedicate to my dream. I was working at least 30 hours a week as a tennis coach and hypnotherapist.
Despite thinking I was prioritising my dream of becoming a bestselling self-help author, my weekly time allocation told a very different story.
So, I stopped working around my day jobs, writing and promoting my books when I felt inspired, and created a strict schedule to follow.
On average, I had to work 20 hours a week on my dreams. I broke this down into 2-hour 45-minute time slots each day.
Of course, I still had a social life and occasionally went on holiday, so if I missed a time slot then I had to catch up at a later date.
Will this work for you?
Perhaps you can’t dedicate 20 hours a week to your dream.
Whatever the case, decide upon the minimum amount of time you can work per week and keep track of the work you do.
Having a schedule is the key.
If it’s only 10 hours a week then so be it. So long as you stick to your schedule and record the hours completed (see how I tick off my time blocks in the picture below) then you’ll progress.
2. Only Buy The Things You Need
The observant among you will realise I took a hit on my income about 10 years ago. Cutting back from working 30 hours a week on my day jobs to between 20 and 25, reduced my resources. However, I was able to mitigate this by following the rule above.
Before any purchase you make, ask yourself the following question, “Do I really NEED what I’m about to buy?”
Do I need to buy this takeaway or can I just cook a meal at home from food I bought at the supermarket?
Do I need the latest iPhone or can I hold onto my current one for another 3 years?
Do I need to buy that item of clothing or do I have enough clothes in my wardrobe for everything I do?
Take an expenses inventory and you’ll be amazed at how much money you can save by applying rule 2.
Making these savings eases the initial hardship of reallocating your time away from day job to working on your dream.
3. Save 10% Of Your Income (Before Tax) Every Year
What Joe, you’re asking me to make even more cut backs on an already tight budget?
I’m sorry, but yes. However, this rule has a strategic purpose that’ll pay dividends down the line.
That 10% of your income may only amount to $4000 each year. However, you take that money and make smart investments that could pay off in as little as 5 years’ time.
Don’t believe it will work?
I applied this rule when I invested £5000 in Tesla stock in 2016.
By 2021, that initial investment was worth £150,000. At this point, I took a sizeable portion of it out, giving me a cushion to cut back even further on my day jobs and put more time into my writing.
Of course, this is an exceptional investment.
However, the principle of saving and investing, year on year, will help you ease the financial burden of pursuing your dreams.
4. Go To Bed Every Evening At 11pm
You may be wondering how you’re going to find the time to work your day job, spend 20 hours a week working on your dream and still enjoy time with friends and family.
It’s not easy.
You have to take a time inventory and discover how you’re spending every second of your day.
If, like me, you’re a freelancer and in charge of your own schedule, one of things you might be doing is staying up late working or relaxing.
This has to stop as it’s not a productive use of your time.
Of course, 11pm might be too late as you have to be up earlier in the morning.
If that’s the case, choose an earlier bed time.
The time you choose isn’t the point. Having a clearly defined endpoint to the day, when you shut everything down and get to bed can, in my experience, buy you an extra 30 minutes productive time per day.
5. Keep Your Mobile Phone Screen Time Below 3 Hours A Day
Go into your phones’ settings and discover what your average screen time per day is clocking in at (The US national average is 4 hours and 37 minutes).
How much of that is productive use?
Then, working on the basis you’ll only allow 25% of your screen time to be non-productive, set a cap (so, whatever business activities you conduct on your phone and then a little extra for browsing social media, YouTube, podcasts etc).
Maybe it’ll only be 2 hours per day.
The number isn’t the point. Instead, it’s being conscious of your phone use, cutting back on the unproductive time and reallocating that to the 20 hours a week you’re going to work on your dream.
6. Use Gary Keller’s “ONE Thing” Goal Setting Program
Before I read The ONE Thing, I used to do whatever work I felt inspired to do.
This typically led me to have a book I was writing, a series of YouTube videos I was creating, guest blog posts I was editing and speaking appearances I was making.
It was fun but I was taking forever to get tasks complete (especially when it came to releasing new books).
What Gary Keller’s book taught me, though, was to work towards a plan.
- First decide on 1 goal for the year.
- Then, decide on 1 goal for the month that will help you accomplish the goal for the year.
- Then, decide on 1 goal for the week that will help you accomplish the goal for the month.
- Finally, decide on 1 goal for your day that will help you accomplish your goal for the week.
The outcome?
You get high priority tasks done and have more impact because you don’t get side-tracked by smaller projects.
7. Meditate/Visualise Every Day
Before I explain this rule, it’s important to note that setting a cap on your mobile phone screen time wasn’t just about freeing up time to work on your dream.
It had a deeper significance.
You don’t want your mind polluted by the noise of social media and the propaganda of the mainstream media.
Instead, when you’re not actively working on your dream, you need to be thinking about it.
That’s why, alongside implementing Rule 5, you need to take 5 to 10 minutes out of your schedule, every day, and focus on succeeding at living your dreams.
What does this do?
First, it can activate the law of attraction (if your vibration is high enough).
Second, you’re keeping your mind focused on your dream and this is important for its own reasons (see below).
Conclusion
Although I still believe inspiration plays an important role in achieving my dreams, I KNOW it won’t show up every day (and I HAVE to).
Furthermore, there’s another factor more important to success – momentum.
Can you build enough of it?
Can you create an environment where your mind never wanders too far from your goal?
Both the work you put into your dream and the thoughts you think about it are what creates momentum.
Momentum moves mountains and, unlike inspiration, it’s relatively easy to manufacture.
Just follow the 7 rules above (although adapt them to your own circumstances) and it will be impossible for you not to progress.
Inspiration may get you started but momentum will help you win.
GET YOUR FREE COURSE
If you want to discover a passion you can make a living from and overcome the fears that are holding you back, check out my free course 30 Days to Escape The System. Click here to get the course right now! (You’ll find the tips on developing belief and self-confidence fascinating!)
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Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash
Double your Productivity with the Ultimate Goal-Setting Guide for 2023
At the beginning of 2022, I set myself 15 goals. It was going to be the year that I wrote two books and published one, all while purchasing a rental property and securing tenants.
The outcome?
I only achieved 4 of my 15 goals.
By the beginning of October this year, I could tell something was going wrong. I’d already failed with a few of my goals and was way off target with most of the remaining ones.
Frustrated, I knew something had to change.
Salvaging 2022 wasn’t possible but I wanted to set up a system that helped me finish the year strong and be prepared for the best ever 2023.
Browsing through some of my old notes, I came across a quote which enlightened me on the error of my ways and led me to a discovery that has dramatically changed my approach to goal setting (and produced some dramatic results).
While re-reading my notes on Man’s Search for Meaning, I saw the following passage from author and psychiatrist, Victor Frankl,
Don’t aim at success – the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge.
This may not seem like your typical goal-setting advice but it lit a switch in my mind.
With all of my previous goals, I’d been aiming at success. I was thinking about how much I could achieve in a year and wanting to set massive targets which, I believed, would inspire me into action. However, setting my goals in this way actually achieved the opposite.
Instead of inspiring me, they left me overwhelmed. Instead of enabling me to achieve, they left me confused.
So, I decided to rip up my previous playbook and start setting goals according to a completely different set of principles.
Here’s what I did . . .
The ONE Thing
Following Frankl’s advice, I needed to stop aiming at success.
This meant that goals based on book sales, or making a certain amount of money, had to go. They were going to lead me to focus on the outcome and overlook my present situation.
Instead, I had to get lost in my work. I had to allow the passion I feel for inspiring people to break free from the system to guide my efforts without thought to what I might achieve.
In theory, this sounded great. However, I could tell there was a possibility I might be unfocused and jump from one project to another if I followed this approach.
At this point, I remembered another influential book and further refined my goal-setting approach.
Gary Keller’s, The ONE Thing, teaches the reader to focus their energy and attention. He asks you to answer one key question, “What’s the ONE Thing I can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”
Pondering this question forced me to apply focus to my passion. Instead of 10 or 15 goals, I had to select one important goal for 2023 that, through achieving it, was going to have the greatest impact on my business and life.
Of course, selecting a certain number of book sales was out of the question (for two reasons).
- Achieving this number was, partly, out of my control.
- Focusing on a big outcome like this would ensure I overlooked the steps needed to get there.
Therefore, I decided to make my “one thing” a goal that was 99% within my power to achieve (more on this to come).
With this established, I then had to work backwards from my goal and figure out all of the steps in the road that would enable me to get there.
Let’s explore how this is achieved.
The steps to goal setting success
My main goal for 2023 is writing and having my 5th book ready to publish (I’m just putting the finishing touches on my 4th).
Here’s how to choose yours and what you should do after that.
Decide upon your main goal for the year.
The criteria for selecting your yearly goal for 2023 are as follows;
- Choose one goal that, once achieved, will have a significant impact on your life.
- Choose a goal that doesn’t rely on external factors for its achievement (therefore, it should be based around creating, learning or mastering rather than selling).
- Choose something achievable (think big but be absolutely certain you can achieve it)
Once you’ve decided upon this goal, starting January 1st (or whenever it is you read this blog post), set one goal for the month (and every month after that).
The criteria for choosing these monthly goals are as follows;
- They should represent significant milestones towards achieving your goal for the year (so, in my example, I would choose completing the research for my 5th book in January, writing an outline in February, and finishing the introduction in March).
- Realise that you can, occasionally, veer off target for a month and complete another important, smaller goal which may not relate to your goal for the year (try not to do this more than twice in one year).
- Select each goal at the start of every month, as opposed to selecting 12 monthly goals on January 1st (this is important because your situation is always changing and you may be further ahead, or behind, than you initially planned).
Once you’ve decided upon your goal for January, begin setting your goal for the first week of January.
The criteria for choosing weekly goals are as follows;
- Make sure your weekly goals contribute to the fulfilment of your monthly goals.
- Set a new goal for the week each Monday and keep doing this until month’s end.
Once you’ve decided upon your goal for the week, select your goal for each and every day of that week.
The criteria for setting daily goals are as follows;
- Make sure your daily goals contribute to the achievement of your weekly goals.
- It’s ok to set time sensitive daily goals that don’t feed into your weekly goal (for example, my goal for today – 28/12/22 – is completing this blog post, but my goal for the week is completing a final read through of the last two chapters of my 4th book, The Rebel Code).
- Some days, your daily goal might only take you 30 minutes to complete and on others it might take 7 hours.
- Understand that it’s ok to skip your daily goals once in a while as it’s important to have time off and focus on other aspects of your life.
And there you have it. A goal-setting approach that will increase your motivation, momentum and focus.
If there’s any confusion about how to apply it to your life, here’s the simple version.
- Set 1 goal for 2023.
- At the beginning of every month, set a goal that needs to be achieved by the end of that month.
- At the beginning of every week, set a goal that needs to be achieved by the end of that week.
- At the start of almost every day (you will have some days off), set a goal that needs to be achieved by the end of the day.
Since I’ve adopted this approach (October 2022), I’ve over doubled my productivity. My hope is that it’ll do the same for you (and if you’re struggling to apply any of the points then please let me know in the comments section below and I’ll be happy to help).
The Secret Sauce
Before I go, it’s worth mentioning one last point. If you were to ask me the secret to making this approach work, I would respond that you shouldn’t demand too much of yourself when setting your yearly, monthly, weekly and daily goals.
Elon Musk claimed that the Falcon 1 – Space X’s first ever rocket – would successfully launch and reach orbit by 2003 (Space X was founded in 2002). It took until September of 2008 for this goal to be realised.
Our major goals ALWAYS take longer to achieve than we think.
Therefore, set a series of achievable goals, get used to meeting them every day, week, month and year, and watch your motivation and momentum soar.
Good luck!
GET YOUR FREE COURSE
If you want to discover a passion you can make a living from and overcome the fears that are holding you back, check out my free course 30 Days to Escape The System. Click here to get the course right now! (You’ll find the tips on developing belief and self-confidence fascinating!)